Thursday, March 23, 2006

More Australian moves towards Internet Censorship

The Herald Sun is reporting a Labor commitment to require ISPs to censor the material viewed by users:

INTERNET service providers (ISPs) will be forced to block violent and pornographic material before it reaches home computers if Labor wins the next federal election.

Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley today, international websites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.

The bans would be maintained by ISPs.

It appears from the report that this would be a mandatory filtering system subject to a possible user opt-out. I've mentioned the Australian proposals before and Electronic Frontiers Australia has more on the existing system of internet censorship.